1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to a method of initializing information about a consumable unit of an image forming apparatus, the image forming apparatus and a host apparatus thereof, and more particularly, to a method of initializing information about a consumable unit of an image forming apparatus which receives initialization data from the outside, the image forming apparatus and a host apparatus thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus forms an image on a recording medium based on printing data. The image forming apparatus includes a consumable unit such as a developing roller, a charging roller and a pickup roller which has a certain life span. If the consumable unit is used longer than the initially-designed life span, image quality is deteriorated or the image forming apparatus does not operate properly. Thus, the consumable unit should be replaced.
Some consumable units have a storage unit such as a CRUM (customer replacement unit memory) to store usage information about the consumable unit therein while others do not.
If the consumable unit does not have the storage unit therein, the usage information about the consumable unit is stored in a storage unit of the image forming apparatus. Thus, a user requests initialization of the usage information about the consumable unit to manufacturers or initializes the usage information through a driver of the image forming apparatus or by an additional user interface.
In this case, a user may input wrong information about the consumable unit by mistake. If the input information is different from the actual information, image quality may be deteriorated if the consumable unit is used longer than its original life span. Accordingly, a user may mistakenly determine that the image forming apparatus itself is malfunctioning and is deteriorating the printing quality. Also, it takes time and costs for a user to requests the initialization of the usage information about the consumable unit to the manufacturer.